


not unlike the waves

by helwolves



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Divergence, Dragon Akaashi, Haikyuu!! Rare Pair Exchange 2017, Implied Bokuto/Kuroo, Interspecies Romance, M/M, Manga Spoilers, Rivals to Lovers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-14
Updated: 2017-03-14
Packaged: 2018-10-04 20:18:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10288625
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/helwolves/pseuds/helwolves
Summary: “If it makes you feel any better, I think I knew for a long time.”“Oh?”“Your shadow has horns.”Akaashi isn't what he seems. Kenma figures it out. They figure other things out, eventually.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hibiscusandmistletoe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hibiscusandmistletoe/gifts).



> Any mistakes/liberties taken with Tokyo geography, tournament scheduling, dragon lore, etc., are my own. To those wary of and/or hoping for actual dragonfucking: I wouldn't spring that on an exchangee who didn't request it (though I will apparently spring dragons in general—sorry), but I might do something tangential later.

It was when Kenma wandered too far and saw Akaashi climbing out of the river that he became sure of two things.

“Ah,” he’d said, mostly to himself.

“Oh,” said Akaashi, looking up from the struggling slip of a drenched white kitten in his hands. “Kozume. How long have you..?”

Kenma stared at him, at his perfectly dry warm-up gear that should have been soaked to translucency, at the shape of his body that seemed very different a few moments ago from a distance. “Long enough.”

Akaashi’s mouth became a small, straight line. “I couldn’t just leave it there,” he said. He looked down at his hands and stroked the kitten, which continued to plot its escape and to trill.

A lot of people _could_ have just left a kitten to its fate after it fell off the embankment, might never have even noticed, but that was part of the second thing—Akaashi couldn’t.

“Here,” said Kenma, tugging off his hoodie and holding it at arm’s length. And then, “Wait, I—” as Akaashi expected him to hold it steady while he wrestled the kitten into a bundle.

He finally looked up at Kenma and smirked. “What’s that face for?”

“I’m not good with animals.” Kenma shoved the wiggling bundle back into Akaashi’s arms.

“Well, thank you for helping anyway,” he said, wiping mud off the kitten’s face with one slightly tattered black cuff. “Sorry about the mess.”

Kenma shrugged. “It’s Kuro’s.”

This made Akaashi laugh, and that made Kenma’s heart skip.

 

★

 

“Isn’t it cheating?”

Keiji startled at Kozume suddenly breaking their agreeable silence as they walked from the river back to Sumida City Gym. He blinked at Kozume beside him, who didn’t look up so much as slightly sideways, but had stopped messing with his phone.

“Isn’t—what?”

“Having a dragon play for a high school volleyball team,” Kozume said, sounding as if needing to elaborate on this was causing him a bone-deep exhaustion.

“I’m not—” Staring down for a moment with narrowed eyes, Keiji finally sighed. “It isn’t like I can do anything on the court. People would _probably_ notice.”

“I guess,” said Kozume. He resumed tapping the screen. “You’re not even the best setter in the prefecture, so...”

Keiji felt a snarl rising in the back of his throat, but when he looked down again, there was a sharp little smile curved around a peeking tongue, and for the first time in a very, very long while, words escaped him.

 

★

 

“If it makes you feel any better, I think I knew for a long time.”

“Oh?”

“Your shadow has horns.”

It did, even then, as they sat on the curb outside the gym. Both of their shadows—Kenma’s hunched, Akaashi’s antlered—stretched long across the parking lot between two empty buses, the sun almost set at their backs. The slightly mud-caked white kitten napped in the depths of Kuro’s hoodie on Akaashi’s lap. 

“Fuck. That... doesn’t make me feel better, no.”

Kenma laughed into his sleeve. “I don’t think anyone else noticed.”

“But of course _you_ would, Kozume-kun,” Akaashi said, the white of his teeth flashing.

Kenma didn’t know what to do with that, so he kept tapping at his phone, cheeks warm behind the fall of his hair.

 

★

 

They were all meant to head home after the last representative matches were finished and awards were handed out. But Kuroo could be convincing even at the most annoying times, and how much more so when he had ammunition such as “We’re all going to nationals!” or “It’s my fuckin’ birthday!” to work with.

So while many did file onto the buses, exhausted, Keiji found himself walking in a cluster of cats and owls on their way to find someplace to celebrate. Kuroo, front and center, had one arm around Kozume (to keep him from wandering into traffic) and the other around Bokuto (to keep him from launching into the clouds as he attempted to walk _while_ reenacting one of his many favorite spikes of the day). 

Keiji felt a little rush of satisfaction along with the exasperation at that. While they had all made it to nationals, and Fukurodani beaten Nekoma, their second match had still been a loss. In the end, Bokuto had raged like a storm, and it was not a good look. But as ever, his moods ebbed and flowed, and Keiji had always been good with tides.

“What’d you do with the cat?”

Keiji didn’t think he liked how Kozume seemed so easily able to sneak up on him, just as he’d apparently been able to slip away from Kuroo. He was absently swiping at frenetic shapes on his phone, but watching Keiji with a sideways glance again.

“Smuggled onto the bus. Shirofuku-san is hoping her parents will take pity on it.”

He thought about the kitten’s damp white fur nestled among the black cotton, and Kozume’s fingers pushing through it hesitantly after Keiji had held out the bundle and assured him the kitten would allow it. “I’m sure she’d let you visit sometime, if you wanted, Kenma-kun.”

Wide golden eyes suddenly blinked up at him.

“Ah,” Keiji breathed, looking away. “Sorry, I—”

“No, it’s—it’s fine. I mean—I’d like it if you would,” Kenma said. “If you want.” And then his striking eyes were hidden again, and Keiji thought it a great pity.

 

★

 

“So I heard you’ve been getting along better with Akaashi.”

“Something like that.”

“Ha. Well, good, that’s great, Kenma. It’s always good to have friends from other places—oh? What’s so funny?”

“Nothing. Don’t be weird, Kuro.”

“Wait—is _that_ who you’ve been texting all the time?”

“Shut up.”

“It _is_!”

“Is _not_.”

“Yes it— _ah_! Kenma, violence is the coward’s—hey! We said _no scratching_.”

 

★

 

“I’m gonna do it. This week, Akaashi, I’m gonna do it! Whether we win or lose. If I don’t kiss him soon, it’ll be too late, right? I’ll never—”

“Bokuto-san, you’re graduating, not ceasing to exist.”

“But don’t you think I should? Before then, before everything changes and he forgets about me?”

“You know Kuroo-san wouldn’t forget about you. Besides, you’re both planning on staying in Tokyo for university, so I don’t see why—”

“ _Akaashi_! That’s not the point. It’s—it’s symbolic, or something. Try to be a little more human and read the mood!”

“... All right. Yes, you should kiss him. You should have ages ago, probably.”

“That’s what I’m _saying_.”

“Oh, but don’t do it if we’ve just knocked Nekoma out of the tournament.”

“Ah! Right. Yeah. You’re so fuckin’ smart, Akaashi, thanks. What am I gonna do without you next year?”

 

★

 

There was so much happening the first morning of nationals, Kenma barely had a chance to look at his phone, let alone find an excuse to sneak off and say hello to Keiji—if he could summon the nerve to even do that. Texting back and forth had gotten so effortless, but this was too _real_. And Kuro had woken him up way too early. And it was freezing, and so fucking crowded, and... It was a lot.

But then Nekoma blasted through their first match, and Kenma put up no resistance when Keiji—flush with Fukurodani’s own first victory of the day and almost two months of pent-up, increasingly suggestive texting-induced tension—dragged him behind a set of bleachers the moment their two teams met up and became adequately distracted yelling amongst themselves.

Kenma had never kissed anyone before, but he was observant, and a quick learner. Keiji fell back easily when Kenma lightly shoved him towards the wall, and made the _best_ noises when Kenma sucked on his bottom lip and licked into his mouth and pressed up against him just like that.

Maybe _real_ wasn’t so bad.

 

★

 

“Did you only start liking me because you found out what I really am?”

In reply, Kenma stared at Keiji over the café table, eyes almost slits, and pointedly stopped stirring sugar into his iced milk tea.

“I’m sorry, it’s just—sorry.” 

He didn’t really even know what it was _just_. Except everything was making him feel prickly and raw. Time was passing too quickly. For seventeen years, his human life had dragged on like the punishment it was meant to be, but now he only wished he had the strength to hold it back, to slow it to a crawl. It felt like they’d only just left the last year’s awards ceremony, yet here they were drafting practice schedules to prepare their respective teams for Spring High prelims again. 

Keiji picked up a discarded straw wrapper and tore it in half, then in half again, and in half again. He was still being watched, Kenma’s face having gone even more scrunched-up in thought—annoyed but adorable (to Keiji, at least).

“I don’t know if it’s worse that you think I didn’t like you before then, or that you just accused me of being some kind of creepy dragonfucker.”

Keiji stopped tearing his wrapper and flashed a small smile. “Well.”

Making Kenma go all pink like that was number four on Keiji’s list of favorite things to do with his time—though the other things ahead of it on the list tended to involve that too.

“You know what I _mean_ ,” Kenma grumbled, punctuating it with a crumpled sugar packet aimed at Keiji’s face. “Anyway, no. I had a stupid crush on you already. It was just you saving that cat that made me realize it could get way worse.”

“ _Worse_? Why have I been cursed to love someone so cruel.”

“I think you’ve spent too much time around Kuro.”

Kenma tossed another packet at Keiji, who snatched it out of the air and returned his boyfriend’s grin. It was all almost distracting enough that Keiji could pretend to be unaware that the new year and what it brought with it were speeding ever closer.

Almost.

**Author's Note:**

> [twitter](https://twitter.com/helwolves/status/841687391253471232) ★ [tumblr](https://helwolves.tumblr.com/post/158382298772/not-unlike-the-waves-12)


End file.
